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Articles

Reflection

A New Philosophy of Darkness

Over the course of history, darkness and creatures associated with the dark have long beenvilified. Yet according to Adam Barkman, this vilification has often resulted in both aesthetic and ethical injustice. At the root of these injustices is humanity’s constant failure both to keep the literal and the metaphorical separate and to remember that all…
April 15, 2010
Review Essays

The Empire of Theory and the Empires of History

Theory and history offer two contrasting ways for apprehending the large and multifaceted concept of “empire.” The six books under consideration sort themselves according to their respective tendencies to treat “empire” theoretically or historically. A concept of “empire” driven by theory will show centripetal trajectories and risk becoming reductionist while historical concepts will expand to…
April 15, 2010
Article

What are Bodies for? An Integrative Examination of Embodiment

In this paper, Elizabeth Lewis Hall presents an integrative understanding of the human body, drawing on theology and the social sciences to answer the question, “What is the body for?” Radical dualist influences on culture and on Christianity have negatively affected experiences of embodiment. The social sciences are used to examine the structure of embodiment…
January 15, 2010
Article

A Slippery Slope to Secularization? An Empirical Analysis of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universitities

In this essay, Samuel Joeckel and Thomas Chesnes explore whether secularization threatens institutions belonging to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Employing a 2007 survey, they show that, though vigilance should still be exercised, these institutions are hardly descending a slippery slope to secularization. The second part of the essay argues that overzealous vigilance…
January 15, 2010
Article

David Sloan Wilson’s Group Selection Theory of Religion: Analysis and Possible Christian Responses

Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson has put forward a functional theory of religion which holds that religious belief and practice are “good” for believers in biological terms. In his view, religious beliefs are attached to reality via this benefit, even though they are fictional in a strict sense. He claims that his group selection-based explanation…
January 15, 2010
Reviews

Believing Again: Doubt and Faith in a Secular Age

Renaissance artists loved to paint the past, and, in their enthusiasm, they plundered the storehouses of both history (the Life of Moses, the Fall of the Roman Republic, the Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection) and legend (the Heroes of Greek Mythology, the Tales surrounding Troy, Romulus and Remus). Their paintings and frescoes still have the power…
January 15, 2010
Reviews

Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment & Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story and Imagination

As both an industry insider and a Christian scholar, Brian Godawa’s situation is unique and vital to both a Christian understanding of culture and a cultural understanding of Christianity. From this tenuous place Godawa delivers his critique of Hollywood’s treatment of Christians and Christian subject matter, but he tempers it with a call for a…
January 15, 2010
Reviews

The Devil Reads Derrida

The title of James K. A. Smith’s book, The Devil Reads Derrida, might prove misleading to those (non-Derrideans) who believe that a text should possess a coherent meaning and that this meaning be evinced in the title. For in fact, the most important word of the title isn either “Derrida” nor “Devil,” but the innocuous…
January 15, 2010
Reviews

God and Morality: A Philosophical History

Modern philosophical ethics have tried often to show how ethics can be independent of theology—with limited success. John Hare is a Christian philosopher, currently holding the Noah Porter Chair of Philosophical Theology at Yale, who has devoted much of his career to exploring these limits. This book continues the exploration by presenting a history of…
January 15, 2010